In a remote area of Alaska, twelve-year-old Willow helps her father with their sled dogs when she is not at school, wishing she were more popular, all the while unaware that the animals surrounding her carry the spirits of dead ancestors and friends who care for her.

In 1917, Aaluk leaves for Siberia while her sister Nutaaq remains in their Alaskan village and becomes one of the few survivors of an influenza epidemic, then in 1986, Nunaaq's great-granddaughter leaves her mother due to a different kind of sickness and returns to the village where they were born.

Following their mother's death in the COVID-19 pandemic, twelve-year-old twins Nicky and Josie move with their father to an isolated island in Alaska, where Nicky embraces her new life, learning about the forests from her cousin, but Josie seems determined to turn herself into a radical environmentalist, with little consideration for the people on the island and the economic woes the pandemic has caused.